5 The Configuration File

The configuration file is used to provide Dynare with information not related to the model (and hence not placed in the model file). At the moment, it is only used when using Dynare to run parallel computations.

On Linux and macOS, the default location of the configuration file is $HOME/.dynare, while on Windows it is %APPDATA%\dynare.ini (typically C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\dynare.ini under Windows XP, or C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\dynare.ini under Windows Vista/7/8). You can specify a non standard location using the conffile option of the dynare command (see Dynare invocation).

The parsing of the configuration file is case-sensitive and it should take the following form, with each option/choice pair placed on a newline:

[command0]
option0 = choice0
option1 = choice1

[command1]
option0 = choice0
option1 = choice1

The configuration file follows a few conventions (self-explanatory conventions such as USER_NAME have been excluded for concision):

COMPUTER_NAME

Indicates the valid name of a server (e.g. localhost, server.cepremap.org) or an IP address.

DRIVE_NAME

Indicates a valid drive name in Windows, without the trailing colon (e.g. C).

PATH

Indicates a valid path in the underlying operating system (e.g. /home/user/dynare/matlab/).

PATH_AND_FILE

Indicates a valid path to a file in the underlying operating system (e.g. /usr/local/MATLAB/R2010b/bin/matlab).

BOOLEAN

Is true or false.